I got to live up to it. And, Tim,' he went on, as he drew a figure with his stick that looked suspiciously like a banjo, 'they sent me over here to see if you won't come to church. I give you fair warning, though, you ain't got a show agin' that man with the black beard onct he gits to tackling you. But, Tim, you 'n' me must be wrong. We cain't stand out when all the whole neighborhood's already filled with religion. You orter seed how happy the old man and muh was. And think how glad yer Aunt Marg❜ret 'll be.'

ironed a collar, and done up his best shirt. He avoided her as much as possible, and after putting the mule to the cart, told her that he 'd come along later with Sam. But she would n't leave until Sam had shown up. And even then there was misgiving in her face as she drove away.

'We'll have to hurry if we git there in time,' said Sam.

'I 'd druther be a little mite late, had n't you?' Tim queried.

And Sam was bound to confess that he would. Presently Tim went in and

'Well, I got to be hitting the grit back to the church.' He stood up. 'Cain't you git on yer duds and go with me now? We 'll take a back seat in the house.'

'No, I cain't go now, Sam.'

'Well, how 'bout to-morrow? Remember, if you don't go there, they 're coming here and have a meeting.'

the fields and into the path through the woods.

When they arrived at the church they found it packed full of people. Carts, wagons, ox-carts, and various means of conveyance were scattered under the oak trees. And now and then a mule brayed and rubbed his bridle vigorously against the rough bark of a tree. These familiar sights and sounds somewhat heartened Tim, and he breathed easier. They found the

He waited, and Tim thought a while. At last with a decisive movement he spat out his tobacco.

‘Yeh, I will. I'll go and see what's being done.'

With that he got up and went to chopping wood. After a few more words, Sam hurried across the fields toward the church.

III

The next day -the last one of the meeting - Tim was filled with a nervous uncertainty. The preaching hour drew near and he had made no preparation to get ready. But Aunt Margaret, who saw her prayers being answered at last, had been up since early morning light, pressed his suit,

one else could push his way in. A hot fetid air poured out from the building in their faces. And Tim shuddered at the thought of entering. They had just begun to hope that they would have to stay outside to hear the sermon, when there was a stir at the door, and a huge bearded man in black clothes and a celluloid collar shoveled his way through and took Tim by the hand.

"This is Brother Tim Messer, is it?' the voice rumbled, and Tim felt the jar of it against his chest as he nodded.

In a moment he was in the church, sitting by Sam on the front seat without knowing how he got there. Directly before him was the altar, a large bench facing the audience, in front of which hay was scattered for the mourners and convicted ones to lie on. From

the way the hay was worn and broken, it was apparent that many a stiff bout with the devil had taken place during the last two weeks. All of these particulars floated above the deep misery of Tim's mind. For Sam was right. He had n't a chance against that preacher, and he already realized it.

The service began immediately with singing. Old Ben Truelove led off with 'A Great Day Coming.' At the beginning of the second stanza, two hundred people were making the walls of the little building swell and subside to the rhythm of the song. Tim had been to Little Bethel many a time in his younger days, but never had he heard such singing. Then at the third stanza the preacher asked everybody to rise, at the same time adding his voice to the tumult. If the music was great before, it was sublime now. Tim felt the chills run up and down his spine at Brother Baxter's awful bass roaring like the wind. He whispered excitedly to Sam, "y God, ain't that fine!' And only a sharp nudge from his partner made him realize that he was being profane in the house of God. He was disappointed when the music subsided. For if there had been a fourth stanza, he felt that he would have joined in. Brother Baxter then called for the experience and thanks meeting, adding that everyone had much to be thankful for now, yea more than ever before, since the last stronghold of Satan in the community was being broken down. And he cast a quick gleam out of his fiery eye at Tim. Brother Johnson was the first to get up and unroll his list of blessings from the Lord. He ended by saying that his cup was 'plumb running over' now that one of their long-lost brothers was saved and the other was on his way to be. For an hour these experience talks went on, and each person made his especial reference to Sam and Tim.

By this time Tim was thinking of bolting through the crowd and out at a window. He felt rivulets of sweat running ceaselessly beneath his shirt. And Sam's condition appeared no better. It seemed to Tim that the climax to his misery had come when Aunt Margaret broke down in the middle of her talk and began weeping wildly. The preacher sat in his chair on the rostrum, fanning himself and crying out now and then, 'Glory to God! Praise His Holy Name!'

Suddenly a piercing scream rent the air, raising the hair on Tim's head. Old Miss Katie Harris sprang out into the aisle, giggling and whining. She came nearer to Tim, who sat convulsed with terror. Then she fell upon him, clasping him around the neck, tearing his collar apart, and in her ecstasy beating him in the face with her palm-leaf fan. When she had nearly strangled him with her long bony fingers, she moved over to Sam. He clung to his seat and endured her pounding. Then, hopping and skipping in a marvelous manner for one of eighty years, she made her way back to her seat. Already a dozen women were sobbing loudly. And some fed their babies at bared breasts, unashamed in the depth of their emotion. Here and there small boys and girls, wedged in between grown-ups, gnawed their dry home-cooked cakes and stared at Tim with large wondering eyes. A feeling of rebellion rose in him. And if at this point the preacher had not arisen and opened his Bible for the sermon, he would very probably have escaped through the door.

'Brethren and sisters,' the speaker began. 'I 'm going to preach to you on the same subject of a few days ago -the weekedness of worldly music and dancing.' Tim looked helplessly at Sam, but his head was already bowed for the drenching of wrath to come.

Then he lowered his head, nor once did he look up while the flood of words poured from the lips of the big dark orator. Up and down the platform the preacher strode, chanting and quoting from the Scriptures. 'Yea,' he rushed on, his voice gathering violence, 'they was a time when the sons of God come together toting they instruments of praise. It's in the Book; read and know the truth. And the first one said, "I bring the harp. Is it a goodly instrument?" "Verily it is good," saith the Lord. And another one fetched up the lute, and Old Moster looked at it and said it was good, very good. And still others fetched the psaltery, the sackbut, the pipe, -yea, they played on a kind of pipe in them days, the dulcimer and the trumpet and the shawm, and even the bells. It 's in the Book; read and know. And last of all, they brung taborettes. And they was all declared to be good and worthy of hymning praise to the Almighty. Later on come two fellows sneaking up, bringing — well, what was they bringing?' he roared. "They was bringing a banjo and a fiddle. What did the Lord do? He said He knew 'em not, and, "Depart ye 'cursed." And right then and there them two was condemned to rot in Hell, yea, to roast in Hell fer making mock of the Creator.' Here he pounded on the table, and the windows rattled in their sockets.

When he had finally cursed the joymaker and the Devil's anointed, in the person of Tim, to the bottomless pit unless he changed his way of living, he stepped down from the pulpit and gathered new strength.

He stood over Tim's shrinking form and began to unroll before him the vision of the sinner's horror and despair on that day of days. 'What 's to become of you, O sinner man! in that judgment day? Have you heerd it? Oh, have you dreamed it? Have you

seed it with yer eyes?- when smoke begins to roll in the west and a loud voice cries out from land to sea' he lifted up his voice in a blood-curdling yell "Time is no more! Time is no more!" And the hills will shake with terror, and the trees 'll be tore up by a mighty wind, and the rocks 'll melt and run lak b'iling water, and the sun and moon be turnt to blood. Dark will be over the face of the earth. Where will you be! Where will you be when that last trumpet sounds! Sinner man, yea, you, Tim Messer, where will you be! You will cry mercy,' he screamed, ‘and there 'll be no mercy.'

Tim felt his flesh freezing as the terrible picture grew. At last the preacher ended his description of Tim's likely end by imitating the wails and screams that would rise to heaven when he lay in outer darkness. His yells and bellowings swept a score of listeners to their knees. Several little children already were writhing on the hay, and men were crying in different parts of the house. Here and there old women crouched at their seats agonizing over Tim's soul. As if in a dream, he heard them mentioning his name.

Then Brother Baxter turned to the table and drank deeply from the pitcher of water. He came back to Tim and pleaded with him in a gentle voice, as he sketched the estate of the blessed sleeping in Abraham's bosom. "There they sing and make music all the days as one. Won't you come and be saved now, Tim?'

At the sweetness of his words, Tim felt the hot tears go coursing down his leathery cheeks.

"Think o' yer mother there with her arms stretched out to you this very minute,' he continued. 'And think o' yer father br'iling in t' other place!' he suddenly thundered. And he went on comparing their different conditions. When he had exhausted

his adjectives he bent close to Tim and began speaking of the day when he would die and the neighbors would come to lay out his cold body. 'And, Brother Tim,' he concluded in heartbroken tones, 'on that day, mebbe on that dark and stormy night, while you lays there beating out yer last breath and the lamp burns low beside yer bed, the Devil 'll come creeping, creeping, up, up, on, on to the porch. He'll open the door jest a crack, now a little wider, a little wider, and he 'll stick his head in, his grinning head in, and look at you laying there helpless in bed.'

Aunt Margaret screamed out above the moaning and praying of the audience. Brother Baxter kept his eyes on Tim. 'He'll come in easy, oh, so easy, his tail making a grisly sliding sound on the floor. Then!' he roared, seizing the terrified Tim by the shoulders, 'he 'll jump onto the bed and carry off yer soul screaming to everlasting hell!' And he shook him like a rag.

Then Tim could stand no more. He fell upon his knees at his seat. Aunt Margaret screamed a second time and went off in a faint. Thereupon a din arose and went out over the quiet countryside of Little Bethel. Women and men shouted and danced before the Lord. And every little child in the house made his way to the pile of straw and fell upon it, many of them in a half trance from the extremity of terror and the consciousness of their lost and ruined condition. Sam was already down at his bench, praying and clutching his hair.

Brother Baxter called for a song, and a great rhythm of 'Almost Persuaded' shook the roof. Old Miss Katie sprang out into the aisle again and began speaking in tongues. Above the tumult her shrill voice could be heard pouring out a stream of senseless words, 'Hoofey-beigh Jesus! Hokum

ma-loki! Whizzem-hi-shimminy! Ishiliki!' Others took it up. Combs and hairpins soon strewed the floor, and men threw their coats and collars from them as they sprang up and down in the air. Tim stumbled forward and fell sobbing at the mourner's bench. The victorious parson called for friends to come and wrestle for his soul, and half the congregation swept up and around him. Brother Baxter himself got down beside Tim, and as the song went on with,

'Almost persuaded now to believe,

Almost persuaded Christ to receive,' —

he shouted in his ringing head, 'Give it up! Give it up! Be saved now, now! To-morrow's too late. Glory to God, give it up!'

In half an hour Tim was saved. The preacher stood near him, smiling seraphically and smoothing his thin hair tenderly as he would an infant's. And when Tim had grown quiet, he asked him to stand up and make public his profession of faith. He staggered to his feet and mumbled out something about being saved and living the life of God. Then he collapsed on his bench.

Brother Baxter announced that the meeting was over. And after a few business matters had been settled, he pronounced the benediction, ending the greatest revival that had ever visited Little Bethel.

But Tim could not sleep. He felt queer and far away from things about him. The house seemed different, and that afternoon he had not gone down to look at his bottom corn. 'Mebbe I'm already a-giving up the goods o' this world,' he thought. But he was not happy. Near morning he fell into a sleep, tortured with dreams of the Devil and a fiery pit yawning before him. As he was being cast headlong into the fire, he awoke with a low scream. He lay the rest of the night shivering and miserable.

More than once his mind dwelt on the instrument under the bed. At last, as day was breaking, he got up softly and dressed. Taking the fiddle under his arm, he stole from the house and went to the barn. There he wrapped it well in an old cotton sheet, put it in a box and nailed the lid down. Then he got a shovel and went into the woods back of the house. The birds were singing in the dogwoods, and dew hung over his cotton. Spider-webs gleamed like silver nets among the grass and bushes, and the whole east was a splash of red, sprinkled above with pink and silver racks which the Little Bethel people called 'rain seed.' But Tim no longer noticed the freshness and glory of the earth. Under a shady holly tree he dug a hole, put the fiddle in, and covered it up. And when he had made a little mound, he stood looking at it with a mournful expression. Then he stuck a stick at the head and foot and went away.

About sunset, when he was milking old Sook, Sam came up the lane and stopped. He leaned over the fence and asked Tim if he wanted to take a walk. Leaving the pail at the house, they set off down toward the bottom. There among his corn, Tim looked out at the flaming west and felt something of the old spirit move within him, and he murmured, 'Ain't it purty now, Sam,

with all this fine crop and the pink o' evening setting in?'

'Yeh, 't is, Tim. You got a good crop. But you 'n' me 's been warned not to feel pride over the here and now, you must remember. I did n't come special to look at yer crop nohow, Tim. I wanted to ax you what you going to do with yer fiddle.'

'What you going to do with yer banjo, Sam?'

'I done got rid of it. Dunno whe'r I done right or not. Eph Slocumb's boy over on Little River wanted a banjo, and I let him have mine yistiddy to keep fer me. He promised to say nothing 'bout it.'

'What would the preacher say to that, Sam? Mebbe you 're putting temptation in Ed's way,' Tim rejoined.

'Well, I jest could n't tear it up. It was sorter lak a part of me,' said Sam, as he gazed gloomily down a dusk-filled row.

"Yeh, I know. Well, I buried my fiddle out back o' the house under a holly. I reckon it 'll be there till judgment day.'

V

The weeks that followed were wretched ones for Tim. More than once he had gone to the holly and been tempted to dig up his fiddle. And several times he had chewed weeds and grass to ease his terrible hunger for tobacco. But so far he had successfully withstood the tempter. And now, as he went into the fodder-field on this particular Saturday morning, he realized that the day of the greatest temptation had come. For to-night was Molly O'Quinn's dance on Little River. And he could n't help thinking about it. All day long he pictured to himself the different people who would be there. And worst of all was the remembrance of Molly's bright eyes watching him in frank admiration